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Workshop 3

How to educate the young to make Democracy sustainable?

The educational theory behind experiential learning—learning by doing—is universal in science and social practice. Teaching democracy without letting students experience and practice it, which is what civic education does throughout the democratic world, is kind of crazy. It is like teaching army conscripts about fighting battles without training them to hold an M16 or a grenade.

I place on your agenda, for application in your own time and place, a proposal to divide the power of governing authorities at school between the administration and the students. A division of powers that allows for “checks and balances” is a crucial component of democracy. The idea is to let young students experience it. Children and adolescents who are granted real power in matters important to them would develop the skills of using power responsibly and nonviolently, which is so important in democracy as well as in school life. 

My visualization of how it could work should be subject to adaptation and adjustment. Its core, which should not be changed, is that the whole community of students, a homeroom classroom or another framework to which students belong interact with one another, know one another, and are known; elect by secret ballot a judicial committee that will be the authority for resolving conflicts and disciplinary problems among its members. All disciplinary concerns in that classroom, between students and between students and teachers, will be addressed by decree of that judicial committee. The judicial committee could have an adult person, but the majority that makes the final decisions should be students, that is, equals of the accused.

This would constitute a fundamental structural change of school governance. The difference it makes would be like that between living under an autocratic and a democratic system. It would model the division of power branches and bring the school to the level of respecting students’ human right to be judged by their equals as was first granted ages ago by the British Magna Carta. It will finally end children’s and adolescents’ harsh, humiliating dependency on the one person who could be their accuser, judge, and punisher.

 

RATIONALE

A school is a hierarchical social organization. Organizational power means that a person is authorized to make decisions that affect others. Power to an organization is what money is to economics or water to a living organism—the main resource that forms all the rest. Sharing political power is the heart of democracy in contrast to all authoritarian rules; therefore, the democratization of schools will not be real without some political sharing of power. As in all societies, political decision-making matters most in conflict. Consequently, I see no other possibility to democratize schools than sharing with students the power to decide on social conflicts among them and between them and school authorities.  

 

THE DUE PROCESS OF LAW

The way the “due process of law” could operate in the school community could essentially be the following. Schools would make their version known, display it in posters, call it the school’s constitution, and modify it to their conditions and liking.

The due process will start with filing a charge or a complaint. Everyone can file a charge against everybody else. These must be filed in writing and handed to a member of the judicial committee.

The judicial committee will then issue a copy of the charge to the accused party at least one day before the scheduled trial. Defendants will have time to prepare their offer to close the case by compensating the plaintiff, apologizing, promising not to repeat the offense (e.g., a ceremonial oath), and so on.

In cases where the defendant’s settlement offer is accepted by the judicial committee, the process ends. The committee notifies the classroom of the settlement and of who among its members is responsible for checking and reporting to the classroom assembly that the defendant kept or did not keep their promise to right the wrong. The absence of guilt and punishment is an element of the process.

If the offender’s settlement offer is not acceptable to the judicial committee, the committee issues its decision (verdict) on what the offender must do for justice to prevail. The offender has the right to appeal the verdict there and then before the classroom general assembly, which votes on it by secret ballot.

In case an offender does not comply with the decision of the judicial committee or the classroom general assembly, the case is transferred to the school judicial committee in which students are represented but not necessarily constitute the majority. In cases of noncompliance with its decision, the classroom judicial committee can decide to banish the offender from school for the rest of the day. Such a decision should be explained and understood as a measure of self-defense, not punishment.   

Trials by the judicial committee will take place weekly on schedule in the homeroom classroom. If no charges were filed for that session, lesson time will be used as an open forum to deliberate on students’ issues at school, chaired by the judicial committee. Decisions will be made by majority vote.

THE RIGHTS OF TEACHERS IN A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL

  • Teachers will not be responsible for maintaining order in the classroom. The school administration will publicly announce that students, through the agency of their democratically elected representatives, are given the legal power to do so.

  • Teachers can bring charges against their students before the classroom judicial committee.

  • Teachers have the right to refuse to be trialed by the classroom judicial committee. If they do refuse, the case is transferred to the school’s judicial committee, and its decision is communicated to the classroom students. 

  • Teachers facing disciplinary problems in the classroom during the lesson can interrupt their teaching and charge the offending students on the spot before the judicial committee. As the evidence has been open to all, the trial by the judicial committee will take place right there during that lesson.

  • The school administration will instruct teachers that when serious disciplinary problems occur during a lesson, democratic education through the activation of the classroom’s judicial committee is to be prioritized in using the lesson’s time over their planned teaching of the learning subject. 

  • Alternatively, teachers experiencing disciplinary problems in the classroom could transfer the facilitation of the lesson to the judicial committee, and act only as dignified lecturers invited by the classroom students.

EXPECTED OUTCOMES OF SCHOOL DEMOCRATIZATION

  1. Graduates will be experienced in democratic life, addressing conflicts, democratic maintenance of order, and decision-making. Future citizens will possess the knowledge, experience, and skills necessary in deliberating, participating in democratic political processes, and defending the democratic system of government. 

  2. Levels of students’ antisocial behavior and negative attitudes against their school will drop significantly. This is based on the strong finding that being entrusted with responsibility and power leads to identification with the system. Mistrust, powerlessness, and dependence generate negative, antisocial rebellious attitudes. 

  3. Levels of violence among students will also drop, as they will have their autonomous legitimate ways to settle conflicts and deal with violent offenders nonviolently. Nonviolent empowerment and the abolition of legalized violence in the form of punishment should reduce students’ general frustration and aggressive motivation. This hypothesis is based on the existing correlation between frustration and aggression.

  1. Teachers’ working conditions will improve after they are relieved of the responsibility to keep order in their classrooms. For teachers who are not naturally charismatic or fearsome, having to discipline students is an extremely demanding and lonely task. They must often perform feats better done by army sergeant majors, lion tamers, stand-up comedians, and other professionals who must control hostile and uninterested audiences. The responsibility of student control has been found as the main source of teachers’ attrition at the workplace. That is likely to change for the better.

  2. Students will tend to cooperate with the judicial committee’s correctional process because it is theirs—they elected it. The fact that offenders are considered trustworthy to be prioritized in designing the process of righting their wrong will help them “own” the process. Their positive attitude will be heightened and resistance lowered by the fact they are not blamed and not punished. They will be dignified and not humiliated by blame and punishment. 

The democratization of schools will have a democratizing and pacifying effect on the community at large, particularly in underprivileged neighborhoods. 

WORKSHOP 3 PROGRAM

COLLECTIVE INSANITY OF AUTOCRATIC EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

 

 

"Authoritarian rule is the accepted policy in the classroom. Democracy and its values are ignored and scorned in practice".  —Carl Rogers, on how the politics of the traditional school is experienced

 

In democratic countries, people who cherish their political rights and freedom contract Collective Insanity when they fail to bring up their next generation of citizens to be democratic. Sustainable democracy requires an infrastructure of people who possess the necessary skills for democratic living. If, like in my country, young people finish high school without participating in decision-making by majority vote even once or being trained in democratic deliberation even once, their democratically minded parents neglect their civil duty to secure the future of democracy. The result, apparent in most if not all democratic countries today, is an increase in the number of citizens who understand democracy only as their right to elect the government, as a majority rule. Majority rule without the democratic practice of tolerance and deliberation in resolving social problems while safeguarding the human rights of everyone, including political opponents and minorities, becomes an empty facade of democracy when most people are not skilled in democratic thinking and living. In addition, if education does not help develop the skills to resist Psychological Exploitation by demagogues, democracy with its majority rule could easily slide toward totalitarianism.

In this chapter, I will describe a structural change in school governance that would make the school democratic for students. Democratizing the school system would require many more changes, but sharing real power with students is the necessary condition for schools to provide students with a democratic life experience. Living experience is indispensable for fostering democratic thinking, habits, and skills.

If there is a lack of training in democratic life in your community’s school system, you as parents or educators could apply the changes and the classroom activities suggested here.

Our Problem

Authoritarian rule is the accepted policy in the classroom. Democracy and its values are ignored in practice. The population is not acquiring skills for democratic thinking and living, which makes Democracy unsustainable, vulnerable to authoritarianism.

Our Workshop

As developing skills is done by practice, schoolchildren must practice the basic democratic skills of deliberation, majority decision, government by freely elected representatives, respecting equal human rights of minorities, rule of Law, and checks-and-balances of power.

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Democratization of schools will occur by delegating the power to make majority decisions in matters of breaking the Law of discipline, and in conflicts among students, to a judicial committee of students elected by their peers. That way they will experience and practice Democracy and develop the necessary skills for becoming democratic citizens.

FAQ 

LINK TO WORKSHOP PROGRAM

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